Her quick decision left the other party somewhat bewildered.
Because he drinks regularly, Ni Jingxi doesn't come every time, unless it's a holiday gathering.
The bar was a place their reporters frequented, serving as a small intelligence exchange hub. Many international journalists would drink there, and over time, it became a gathering place for war correspondents in Jerusalem.
When Ni Jingxi entered, she was surprised to see quite a few familiar faces.
Kevin immediately waved to her and said, "Ni, I heard you encountered danger on your way back today."
A CCTV reporter standing nearby immediately asked with concern, "Are you alright?"
They had all heard Kevin's explanation. None of them knew about this beforehand, and they were worried about Ni Jingxi, but they didn't expect her to be in such good condition.
Ni Jingxi looked at him and asked, "How did you know?"
Kevin laughed and said, "Simon told me."
It was only then that she learned that the officer's name was Simon. He had some connection with Kevin and knew that Kevin was close to Ni Jingxi. Therefore, he wanted to use Kevin to tell Ni Jingxi that the two people had been sent to the police station.
Ni Jingxi ordered a glass of wine and nodded lightly, "Please tell him thank you for me."
“Perhaps you can talk to him yourself,” Kevin chuckled, glancing to the side.
Unexpectedly, the officer named Simon actually appeared at the tavern. He stood by the bar, ordered two drinks, and slowly walked over, placing them in front of Ni Jingxi.
“My name is Simon,” he introduced himself.
Ni Jingxi nodded: "I am Ni Jingxi."
However, her name is obscure and difficult for foreigners to understand, so many people simply call her Ni.
Unexpectedly, Simon was quite direct, smiling and saying, "Perhaps we can get to know each other again. I apologize for what I said today."
Ni Jingxi knew which sentence he was referring to.
At this moment, Kevin looked at the two of them again and again, and suddenly said, "Simon, I knew Ni first, so you can't take her away from me."
Ni Jingxi never expected that the two of them would actually argue about something like this.
So she downed the wine in her glass in one gulp and said, "I'm already married."
A hush fell over the table. Simon and Kevin both stared at her. The domestic reporters present were not surprised; they exchanged a knowing smile, feeling a little sorry for their two international friends.
Kevin: "You already have a husband?"
Ni Jingxi: "Yes."
He stared in disbelief at Ni Jingxi's hand; she wasn't wearing a wedding ring. He exclaimed, "What kind of person is he?"
Ni Jingxi, impatient with his curiosity, said bluntly, "He is handsome, tall, and rich; he is a perfect man."
She just wanted to get rid of these two people as soon as possible.
Kevin looked hurt, but Simon clearly wasn't. He handed the glass of wine he had bought earlier to Ni Jingxi and said firmly, "I don't believe you have a husband."
But the next second, the atmosphere behind him suddenly became a little tense.
A tall Chinese man slowly walked over and stopped behind them, while a few bodyguard-like figures stood quietly and warily watching their surroundings not far away.
Ni Jingxi took a deep breath and looked up to speak again when a hand reached out from the side and took the glass of wine in front of her.
That long, slender, and fair hand, with its slender knuckles slightly raised, and the fingers gripping the cup, were incredibly long. Just looking at that hand was enough to make one feel intoxicated.
As her gaze followed that hand upwards, and upwards still upwards.
Until she saw his face, that handsome, deep-set face.
Completely stunned.
The man picked up the wine glass on the table, tilted his head back, and drank it all in one gulp. When he looked up, his Adam's apple, the most sensual bone on a man's neck, swayed slightly.
He finished the glass of wine.
Simon looked up, displeased, and asked, "Sir, who are you?"
Huo Shenyan looked down at him with his eyes lowered, his voice low and hoarse from drinking: "I am her handsome, tall, and rich husband."
Author's Note: Brother Shenyan: Who the hell is trying to steal my wife again? Who's asking for it?
Chapter 55
Because he was very close to the stars, but he wanted to be closer to either the stars above his head or the stars beside him.
Ni Jingxi looked at him, her eyes blinking slightly as her thick, long eyelashes trembled, glistening faintly in the cool moonlight, a beauty that was breathtaking.
Ni Jingxi turned her face back, leaned back in the chair, and looked up at the starry sky above. The dense stars in the dark night sky were like dazzling diamonds scattered randomly on black velvet.
Suddenly, she didn't know how to start the conversation.
Huo Shenyan was also looking up at the sky. He didn't know how long it had been since he had such a leisurely moment. He was just lying quietly with the girl he had been longing for beside him.
He asked, "How did you get through this year?"
Ni Jingxi was slightly taken aback by the question.
A year, a whole year.
I remember she left at the end of June, almost right after her grandmother's funeral. She immediately started preparing to go abroad.
At that time, she felt she didn't want to stay in the country for even a second longer.
I long to go out into the wider world and see this bigger world.
Now she has truly seen it. Although she is usually stationed in Jerusalem, she has crossed the Jordan River, visited Palestine, entered Jordan's largest refugee camp, and even walked through the Golan Heights with a UN patrol team.
She had witnessed the most miserable aspects of life in the world; in the refugee camps, people's lives were no longer life.
They are simply surviving.
So she thought for a long time, and then quietly told him about her experiences over the past year, telling him everything she had seen and heard.
It turns out that there really is such depressing sadness in this world, and she can only be an observer, unable to see or touch it.
After she finished speaking, Ni Jingxi saw him staring at her silently. She couldn't quite grasp his emotions, so she asked softly, "What's wrong?"
Huo Shenyan suddenly smiled and said softly, "I was worried about you. This is Israel, where conflict and war have never stopped. You left without looking back, without even sending me a message. But now it seems you're living a very fulfilling life."
More than just worry, for a period of time he kept having nightmares about her being covered in blood.
When he woke up from the nightmare, Huo Shenyan wished he could fly here immediately, grab her back, and keep her by his side, where he could see and touch her.
Even if she was unhappy, he only hoped that she would be safe.
Hearing the bitterness in his words, Ni Jingxi whispered, "I'm sorry."
"You really never thought of contacting me?" Huo Shenyan tilted his head and looked at her.
Ni Jingxi was truly stunned. Had she thought about this?
How could I not have thought of that?
When Ni Jingxi saw a living person being beaten to death right in front of her for the first time, she trembled all over. Her stomach churned, and she vomited up everything she had eaten.
The scene was gruesome, filled with blood and screams of unimaginable horror.
When she returned to her residence, the surroundings were completely silent, and she could still hear the sounds of gunfire and explosions echoing in her ears for a long time.
She took out her phone, opened his WeChat, and pressed the message button firmly with her finger.
He whispered his name, as if only in this way could he dispel the gunshots in his mind.
Over and over again.
It was after that incident that Ni Jingxi developed the habit of writing a diary. In fact, her mother had always had the habit of writing a diary. Before her father went abroad, all of her mother's diaries were given to her for safekeeping.
Looking at those diaries, she wondered what her mother was feeling when she wrote so many diaries.
Now, as she writes down her longing for Huo Shenyan word by word on paper, she begins to understand her mother's feelings back then.
Ni Jingxi looked at him and asked softly, "And you, what are you like?"
Huo Shenyan lowered his eyes.
How can I get through life without her?
Work, nothing but work, and he even refused Xiao Yichen's occasional invitations to go out for drinks.
Although the wedding was announced to the public as being canceled due to the passing of Jingxi's maternal grandmother, which outsiders could understand, it could not be kept secret from the elders in the family.
Zhong Lan went straight to Ni Jingxi's house after failing to see her several times. Huo Shenyan originally didn't want to talk about this.
In his view, Ni Jingxi would come back sooner or later, and even if she didn't come back now, he would find her. Rather than telling the elders and making them worry unnecessarily, it was better to say nothing.
However, after Zhong Lan looked around the villa, she noticed something amiss. Almost all of Ni Jingxi's personal belongings were gone. Even if she really did go abroad to relax because she was upset about her grandmother's death, as Huo Shenyan said, she wouldn't have taken all her things with her.
She pressed him for details, and Huo Shenyan told her the truth.
When Zhong Lan heard that Ni Jingxi's father's disappearance was indeed related to him, she was stunned for a long time, looking at him: "You..."
"How could you keep this from her all this time?" Zhong Lan's last words were surprisingly biased towards Ni Jingxi.
She looked up and sighed: "Don't you know how much of a blow it was to her that her father went missing? And then she found out that you had kept such an important thing from her. Do you think she wouldn't be heartbroken?"
When she found out that Ni Jingxi had actually gone to Israel to work as a war correspondent, Zhong Lan was so angry that she stood up and pointed her finger at her nose, saying, "Shenyan, I don't care, you just go and bring Jingxi back to me right now. What kind of place is Israel? How dangerous is being a war correspondent? Do I need to tell you?"
Huo Shenyan knew Zhong Lan's worries, and he was just as worried.
I was afraid she would get sick, afraid she would be bullied by others while she was alone out there, and even more afraid of her fearless nature, always rushing to the front and risking her life.
So he hired someone to protect her secretly.
But an unexpected incident still occurred.
His original itinerary was to go to Europe, but he ended up transiting through Israel. Who knew that as soon as he got off the plane, he heard people talking to him from there.
In the afternoon, they followed Ni Jingxi as usual, but since Ni Jingxi was going to Gaza, they didn't dare to get too close, so they kept a great distance from the ground on the highway back to Jerusalem.
After all, under normal circumstances, this road, though quiet, is generally free of major incidents.
It was just an unexpected coincidence that Ni Jingxi's car broke down and she encountered two people with ill intentions.
Her protectors arrived around the same time as the army returning to the city, but because the army had already stopped dealing with the situation, they did not get close.
However, this was indeed their oversight, so they immediately reported it to Huo Shenyan after it happened.